By Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling
excerpt:
Hours after an ICE agent shot and killed a legal observer in Minneapolis, the Trump administration announced plans to invest in even more ICE activity.
In a sit-down interview with Fox News Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance revealed that he expects “deportation numbers [to] ramp up” as the agency increases hiring in the coming year.
“I think we’re going to see those deportation numbers ramp up as we get more and more people online, working for ICE, going door to door, and making sure that if you’re an illegal alien, you’ve gotta get out and apply [for citizenship] through the proper channels,” Vance told the network.
Vance’s timing couldn’t be worse, especially considering that the administration’s commitment to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s growth was already in the works.
Last week, internal documents obtained by The Washington Post revealed that the deportation agency had earmarked $100 million for online advertisements over the next year, hoping to draw gun rights advocates and military enthusiasts into its ranks.
The agency’s so-called “wartime recruitment” strategy involves a nationwide hiring spree that aims to take on as many as 10,000 new officers across the country.
That massive expenditure is practically a drop in the bucket of ICE’s 2026 budget allotment, however. Congress virtually tripled the agency’s budget this summer when it passed Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, jumping its appropriations from roughly $9.6 billion to $30 billion. (At the same time, the Republican-controlled legislature insisted that it was fiscally necessary to take a hatchet to Medicaid, gutting billions of dollars from the critical public health care program.)
Meanwhile, Minneapolis residents are still reeling from an agent’s decision to shoot dead a 37-year-old woman, Renee Nicole Good, who had been sitting in her car just a few blocks from where she lived.
“That’s so stupid” that she was killed, Donna Ganger—Good’s mother—told the Minnesota Star Tribune. Good leaves behind her 6-year-old son, whose father died in 2023 at the age of 36.
“There’s nobody else in his life,” the child’s paternal grandfather told the Tribune. “I’ll drive. I’ll fly. To come and get my grandchild.”
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